Fake Gold
by ihaveastory
Summary: AU. Jess and his brother come to live with Luke, Lorelai, and Rory in Stars Hollow. But, Jess has had a different past, so, perhaps, he'll have a different future.
1. Fashionably Late

Fake Gold 

Note: This is not a part of the Lightning series. I haven't abandoned that one. Don't worry. I'll get to it soon. I just needed a break for this LIT. I hope you like it.

**Necessary Background Info**: Takes place at the would-be start of season one, but Luke and Lorelai have just gotten married. Rory is starting Chilton. Dean does not exist. Jess comes to live in Stars Hollow, but his story is different. He has a younger brother. His father left when he was 5. Jimmy is a big movie star and Liz is a touring musician. Jess and his brother have pasts that will be revealed throughout the story.

P.S. If there are typos, assume I know the proper smelling/grammar and that I was just having dumb moment.

Chapter One: Fashionably Late 

Thank God Old Man Twickham had kicked the bucket.

It was strange how quickly a family could grow. Just a few short months ago it had just been Lorelai and Rory. The witty little mother-daughter duo of blue-eyed young women, but they knew that couldn't last forever. They didn't really want it to. There was something peculiar about the way they had lived. For the most part it was a good peculiar, but it was lacking something. Luke. It was lacking Luke. He brought a security that hadn't been there. Before, the family was just a partnership of girls who couldn't live without each other. That was the driving force in their lives. Yes, ambitions made little homes in their minds, but they had always held onto each other more firmly than anything else. They didn't want anything to come between them because it would change what they had. What they had was safe, comfortable, but it wasn't really safe. That was the scariest thing. It could only last for so long. Life, real life would eventually step in. When Luke stepped in, everything they had ever believed changed. They saw what could be. They saw a solution. They saw happiness. Eternal happiness. There were moments of sadness, of longing for the past, but they pushed those aside. The good outweighed the bad. They had a new family and a new home. They were safe.

Well, what is safe?

Lorelai had been reluctant to move out of her and Rory's old house, but as she leaned against one of the tall pillars, awaiting the arrival of her two nephews, she was glad Luke had talked her into it.

"When are they getting here?" Rory asked as she battled her way through the screen door. Luke had just replaced its springs and now the door had taken to swinging back and hitting you before you could get out. Lorelai had joked that it was like a mousetrap for burglars. Rory supposed that it was just one of those little, unfamiliar quirks she'd have to get used to in her new life.

"Fifteen minutes ago." Lorelai answered with a smiling roll of her eyes. "I guess they're going for the whole "fashionably late" thing." She surmised as her daughter took a seat on the porch railing.

"I didn't think boys cared about that stuff." Rory thought aloud as she readjusted the porch fan in an effort to combat the August heat.

"Maybe they don't. How should I know?" Lorelai answered with a laugh and a shrug. "These ones might be special though. Luke was so hush hush about them. He was like some crazy CIA guy. I don't know what to expect." She threw a glance down the street once again.

"Well, we know that Luke's sister is a musician and our theory that she might be a Bangle or from Bananarama was shot to pieces when I Googled her yesterday. She does this weird sort of folksy/ technoy stuff that's big in Europe." Rory explained.

"Hence the European tour." Lorelai interjected.

"The site said something about her marriage to Jimmy Jay Mariano, but-" Rory was interrupted.

"Jimmy Jay? Wouldn't it be funny if he was really Jimmy Jay and Luke had just never told us that his ex-brother-in-law is _the_ Jimmy Jay?" The two girls shared a laugh.

Upstairs, Luke could hear his wife and stepdaughter giggling about something. He assumed it was about something he wouldn't understand anyway so he left them to giggle in peace. He liked to leave them to just be with each other sometimes. He liked to hear them giggle the way they had for years and he hoped they would continue forever. He just hoped they weren't laughing at him. Eh, who was he kidding? They were always laughing at him. Sometimes he believed that was the basis of their new little family; he fixed things while they mocked. Actually, it was pretty nice.

Jess arched an eyebrow at his brother as they drove past the "Welcome to Stars Hollow" sign. The younger boy gave a shrug. As they drove through the town square, the older boy began to frown and the younger started to grin.

"This place is like some cracked out Norman Rockwell alternate universe." Jess stated with furrowed brow.

"I know." Laughed the twelve-year-old.

"Cohlie, we have to live here." Jess tried to make his brother understand.

"I know." Cohlie's laughter only grew.

"Why are you laughing?" Jess asked as the crease between his eyes deepened.

"Because I just figured out why Liz is nuts." With this Jess let a bitter guffaw slip from his smirking lips as his brother's light, angelic laughter swirled through the back of their limousine, but as the car began to slow to a stop on a quaint little street, Cohlie watched as his brother's surface hardened a bit. Jess folded his smirk into stony neutrality, put on his sunglasses, and prepared himself for anything.

Lorelai and Rory stopped laughing when they saw a black town-car stop in front of the house.

"Luke?" Lorelai called without taking her eyes from the car.

"Yeah?"

"Either your nephews or the mob have arrived." Rory declared.

"Probably both." Luke mumbled as he kicked through the front door and headed towards the car. The doors opened and the two boys stepped out. Lorelai and Rory immediately froze on the porch.

"Is that Cohlie James?" Rory whispered in awe as she looked at the thin, poised, twelve-year-old boy with blonde hair that fell messily over his huge eyes.

"Yes, but that's not the half of it. Get a closer look at Mr. Broody." Lorelai said through the corner of her mouth as she pulled her daughter towards the guests.

"Holy crap." Rory breathed as she recognized the dark-haired boy.

Luke, Jess, and Cohlie stood awkwardly for a moment. To their knowledge, there were no preset rules of etiquette regarding estranged relatives. Luke squeezed his hands together and looked on the verge of speech without actually saying anything. Cohlie had wrapped his right ankle around his left as he unconsciously tugged at the hem of his t-shirt. Jess stood completely still. He didn't fidget. Eventually he turned and picked up his and Cohlie's army duffel, effectively waking his brother and uncle from their uncomfortable trance.

"Right. So-" Luke began as he adjusted his baseball cap.

"Hi." Cohlie volunteered with a bright smile that relaxed his uncle ever so slightly. Lorelai and Rory had neared the group in time to see the awkwardness.

"Hi, I'm Lorelai." She offered with a warm smile when she saw that her husband was not about to introduce her.

"Oh, yeah," Luke realized his error. "Cohlie, Jess this is my wife, Lorelai and her daughter, Rory." He clumsily introduced.

"Hi." Cohlie shook Lorelai's hand. "Hi." He shook Rory's hand.

Jess took off his sunglasses and nodded. He looked at his new family. Lorelai radiated a level of enthusiasm that made him uncomfortable. His first inclination was not to like her. She was too unfamiliar. He didn't want unfamiliar. He wanted to be left alone. At least, he felt this way until he made eye contact with Rory. It wasn't that she was, hands down, the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, or the way she smiled so gently that made him feel better, but it was the fact that she was, most definitely, as uncomfortable as he was. He almost smiled. Almost.


	2. Weird

Fake Gold

A/N: Reviewers, I love you all. I had forgotten how great it feels to get a review.

A/N2: Things are going to start out slow, but they'll pick up as the story continues. I just want to give you a context and make sure you know how these characters will interact. The chapter will get longer too. I just need to get back into the swing of things.

A/N3: This is the last one. I swear. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Cohlie is pronounced like Cole-y. I met a kid named Cohlie once and I just found that name so strange and endearing that I had to use it.

Chapter Two: Weird

Dinner that night was weird. Yes, weird. There is no more appropriate word. Everyone sat around an antique dining room table, which had been dug out of some mysterious storage place just days before, eating diner takeout amongst boxes of miscellaneous crap that had yet to be unpacked. Conversation was lacking, to say the least. Lorelai's normal conversation skills were not quite prepared for this dinner. She was a little star-struck and every topic that formed in her mind was vetoed before anything but a "so" or a "how" could escape her perplexed lips. So, they ate. The chewing was grotesquely audible.

Rory ate little, dainty bites of her huge burger. Her eyes would flicker from Jess to her mother to Cohlie and back to Jess again.

Lorelai would catch her daughter's glances and telepathically scream along with her. She would have noticed Rory's subtle preoccupation with Jess if her own focus hadn't been magnetically pulled to Cohlie. He fascinated her. She'd read something in Us Weekly a few months before about how he had worn an Armani suit to the Tony Awards. She stared at him now, picturing him in an Armani suit at her dinner table, thinking about what he might be thinking. Maybe he was thinking about that Armani suit too. She found him quite distracting. He was famous for his eyes and understandably so. They were an intense, almost cobalt blue, but due to some sort of pigment problem his left iris had a shocking stripe of indigo across the bright blue. She wondered if he were self-conscious about that because he kept his long hair parted in such a way that it fell in an almost Veronica Lake-like fashion across the intriguing eye. His hair was a dirty blonde, cut to form a neat mess that fell to his jaw-line. His jaw was boyishly soft, but it was beginning to sharpen with age into an angular, artistic structure. His lips were small, but full dollops of near-red in the midst of his lightly tanned skin. In the center of his perfect little face was a perfect little nose with nostrils that seemed to be permanently flared. His angry nose atop his kindly lips left him virtually unreadable. But Lorelai tried to read him anyway.

For his part, Cohlie was looking around the room, trying not to see Lorelai looking at him, watching the way his uncle seemed unfazed by the weirdness of this dinner, and looking at the way his brother's eyes were scanning over Rory. He knew that Jess was probably writing up her description in his mind and finding questions to be answered later. Cohlie couldn't handle a silence like this. He was used to a constant chatter, either with him or about him, preferably the former. So, he did the only thing he could think do to: he knocked over his glass.

Soda went everywhere. Ice cubes skidded across the table and clattered to the floor. In an instant everyone was back to life. Lorelai and Rory jumped away from the puddle while Luke leapt to the rescue with a rag.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Cohlie exclaimed sincerely as he bent to pick up sticky ice-cubes from the wooden floor. He really was sorry. He just had to do something and a beverage upheaval was the only plan he could conjure.

"It's fine." Luke decreed as he dabbed at the mess with a multitude of rags.

"Yeah, thank God for klutziness because that meal was getting _boring_." Lorelai added. Apparently a coca-cola spill was all it took for her to find her voice again. When she caught the guilty yet proud little grin on Cohlie's lips she let her own grin shine. He sent her a wink and she sent him one back. This was a kid after her own heart.

IIIIIIII

In a cluttered corner of the large, blue room Jess stood with his left hand in the pocket of his jeans and his right hand gripping a half a cheeseburger. The smirk sitting in his hazel eyes took over a corner of his mouth when he noticed Rory shrinking into his little area. Together, they watched the frenzy of cleaning from a safe, but involved distance.

"Luke hates stickiness." Rory commented quietly with a little, good-natured smile. She didn't turn to look at Jess, but she knew he was listening.

"I remember." He said with enticing simplicity. This got Rory to turn and look at him with a raise of one of her sharply gentle eyebrows. Even her look of daring inquisition held a dose of laughable innocence. He knew that he shouldn't let himself judge her by her appearance, but sometimes it was unavoidable. That was life. He had grown up in the business of appearances and taking things at face value. He could feel her judging him and putting him in a category. He had given up on trying to make people get to know him. Now he just shut them out. It was easier. Except when it wasn't. "The last time I really saw Luke was about eleven years ago and I just remember him mumbling about "jam hands" or something equally insane." He shrugged for good measure.

"Ah, the jam hands spiel. I know it well." Rory smiled warmly, but Jess didn't return it. He didn't really know why he didn't smile back. It would have been simple. It would have been too simple. She shouldn't like him just yet. It was too soon. He felt a slight pang of disappointed relief when he saw her smile fade and her eyes turn back to the family. It was for the best.

IIIIIIII

After the spill dinner got better. It was definitely still weird, but a better weird. In an effort to avoid any sensitive topics, the main conversation had focused itself on music.

"I like rap." Cohlie said with a shy grin that made little dimples appear in his cheeks.

"Is that the stuff with all the swear words and the men in track suits complaining about their moms?" Luke asked with a displeased look around his eyes.

"Yes, but it's not just that it's-" he drifted off, unable to explain.

"Pleasantly angry." Jess supplied in an even tone.

"Yes." Cohlie smiled. "Exactly. Music is about conveying an emotion and rap has a way of capturing anger very well."

"What about other emotions?" Lorelai asked quizzically. "Patsy Cline does a rather stellar job at expressing her feelings without talking about drugs or violence." She added with smirk.

"Oh, I love Patsy!" Cohlie cried with glee. "Hey, what about Gladys Knight and the Pips?" He tossed out.

"Love them." Lorelai had a broad smile on her face. "XTC?"

"Of course." The boy laughed. Jess watched with masked delight as his brother got comfortable in their new surroundings, but there was a distinct uneasiness in his stomach. He had always been very protective of the boy. He didn't want Cohlie to suffer like he had. He tried to shield him from disappointment. That's why he was growing increasingly wary of Lorelai. She was a character that people would always feel strongly about. Whether they were good feelings or bad feelings, they would be strong and Jess saw that Cohlie would be fond of this woman and all he saw was the opportunity for grave disappointment.

"Ok," Rory jumped in, "Here's the big question: the Offspring or Metallica?" She let her glance wander to her mother and they both shared fleeting thoughts of Christopher, and they both thought about the old days for a split second before being reminded that the new days were looking pretty good.

"Metallica." Both Cohlie and Jess said. They shared a smileless grin before the ladies erupted in laughter.

Yes, the new days might be ok.


End file.
